12/08/2009

"Somewhere in Des Moines or San Antonio there is a young gay person who all the sudden realizes that he or she is gay; knows that if their parents find out they will be tossed out of the house, their classmates will taunt the child, and the Anita Bryant's and John Briggs' are doing their part on TV. And that child has several options: staying in the closet, and suicide. And then one day that child might open the paper that says "Homosexual elected in San Francisco" and there are two new options: the option is to go to California, or stay in San Antonio and fight. Two days after I was elected I got a phone call and the voice was quite young. It was from Altoona, Pennsylvania. And the person said "Thanks". And you've got to elect gay people, so that thousand upon thousands like that child know that there is hope for a better world; there is hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope, not only gays, but those who are blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us's: without hope the us's give up. I know that you can't live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you, and you, and you, and you have got to give them hope."-Harvey Milk, 1978

This story read here. I wrote it. Sure, it's not a literary masterpiece of anything. In fact there's one or two things I'm not too sure about. But it's still great fun, and a little frightening to hear your own words coming back to haunt you, so to speak.Go send Magnus your writing. It is for the betterment of mankind. Why would I lie about something like that?

The biggest problem with the green energy has always been that it costs too much to produce even a little of it. In the end fossil fuel are always cheaper, and that's usually what tips the scale in their favor.But by the sound of this, things are starting to happen.Maybe it's the increasing interest in green living, what with ecological food stuffs, local fruits and veggies, and not to mention green roofing (high end example), that's caused an increased interest in the market? Maybe it's even a cultural shift? Well, not likely, but one can always hope.

Another interesting thing I've heard of lately is eco farming as vacation. You basically go to a farm and help them plant and manage things. You get to learn a lot about farming ecologically, and eat what's produced on the farm while staying there. There's probably some seriously hard work involved. And people do this for their vacation. I find it pretty brilliant. Instead of laying around on the beach of the closest tourist trap you actually learn things and get to do something different. That's probably a big part of the appeal actually.Here's a link. The site is some sort of hub for countries where they've got their own thing going. So far there's only Sweden and Portugal. Time will tell if other countries pop up. Or maybe you've got to kick things into gear yourself?

Of course we also have cities that need don't have enough water as is, in which case water farming might be a solution.

What I find most interesting out of this is obviously urban farming. I like to do a bit of it myself, and seeing a lot of the blank spaces turned into mini veggie gardens makes a lot of sense. Who needs a fucking lawn anyway? Improve the environment and eat tastier things almost straight out of the ground! Seriously. Fresh fruits and veggies taste better when you've grown them yourself.

Warning, some of this might be old news. Readers are advised to do some digging on their own to maximize accuracy.